Shut Up! I Am Evil Now
so I became a straw man of my own desire
so I began to cause problems on purpose
so I let my dump truck ass become my hubris
so I drank a sea of wrath for my drop of pleasure
so I bought little candles shaped like seashells
they are functionless and twee
and I love them
you would rather see violent than vapid and vacuous
Listen: men will drill a hole into your head and fuck it
and they will always tell Cassandra she’s thinking too much
obviously, I eat the fruit
and I am glad
CYBER WOMAN ALIVE, YOU MIRACLE
nibbling the edge of a peach gummy edible,
I trace the outline of oblivion. walking
the community trail in my least practical boots
and Aileen Wuornos Went To Heaven t-shirt,
I cross another zone of intensity and on my phone,
I bookmark yet another It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia fanfic
it is a Tuesday, and something is on it’s way to me.
there is always another mystery to unravel
I’m a little girl giggling in the mystery, actually
barefoot and leaking juices,
I eat a pomegranate
and gagging on a mouthful of bursting arils,
I contract hookworm
I am being ferried off to a bad place
(present day, present time)
my birthright was pleasure then devoured
by mass leisure machine, the picture machine
made my brain go soft, now
I carve the ripeness out, suck
the scalpel like a thumb and stain
my teeth carmine
I was precocious and now what?
no, not a gifted child, rather
a tween BDSM forum troll
spelunking the darkest cesspits of 2009
now, where is the post 9/11 Judy Blume
to eulogize my godhole?
make my girlhood Bart Simpson
a jaundiced, pudgy thing
deoedipanizing Marge and Homer
make me cartoon, make me spectacle!
now the ego dissipates with the refresh of the feed,
the superego no longer God but the jowls of Dr. Phil
or, Heaven forbid, Jameela Jamil
I walk straight and go in a circle. mortify
myself in the black forest, slither
between two things
and hatch myself into a third,
amniotic fluid and stuttering
I am a little bit ugly and unwilling to please
and this saves me
another sun will have no choice to rise,
fluorescent, laughing, and mean. and by then
I will have already lived a thousand lives,
in each one, knowing
there is a Westfield mall fifteen minutes away
where I can buy myself another
kawaii keychain
Gatekeep! Gaslight! Girlboss!
I muddle herbs
I syrup flowers
I sunburn shoulders
I middle child syndrome my hair into bathroom mullet
I bonsai tree this body into something “breedable”
I mushroom cloud the family dinner
I girlboss like a mechanical bull
I gaslight myself into neoliberal striving
I gatekeep Talkspace from the dark archive of my psyche
I rig the game then cry Ghibli tears
I think-piece at the party
I dysregulate bowel movements
I Midsommar on girl’s night
I Marlboro Man through the grief
I live laugh love until I don’t
I shirk redemption
I slam in the back of my Dragula
Daliah Angelique is a Pisces moon lesbian writing about queer womanhood, trauma, and late capitalist dreamscapes. She lives with her wife and chihuahua in the Pacific Northwest. You can find more of her work at daliahangelique.com
Angel Rust 